


A Bullet Through a Flock of Doves

by songlin



Series: Powerful, Beautiful and Without Regret [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood Drinking, Gen, Historical, Vampire Sherlock, Vampires, Victorian, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 10:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He'll be dead in a month."<br/>Jim was half right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bullet Through a Flock of Doves

**Author's Note:**

> Theme: Wicked Fascinations by Circus Contraption

Jim Moriarty has worn his name for most of his life. He’s quite fond of it.

It’s not his first, though. He was born Iacomus Licinia Murena in the 4th century AD, the fifth of six sons. The family was well-off, but not so much that their sons could rely on their inheritance, and consequently the man who would become Jim Moriarty was groomed for a military career practically from birth.

And if his father noticed the way his young son treated the slaves’ children and the household animals and hoped the army would give him an outlet, he never said.

Iacomus would have rather stayed in Rome. He had a fantastic mind for business and sums, but his father wouldn’t hear of it. The family trading business was his brother’s birthright, and the military was his.

He was twenty-two when he and his comrades were sent on an exploratory mission into northern Britain. It went badly. He took a club to the head and fell, fully expecting never to rise.

Instead, he woke on the floor of a cave with a bloody wrist clamped to his mouth, choking and gagging on the blood. There was a fire, and strange voices singing odd songs in a tongue he did not know. They did not cease, not even when the strange foreign man on the ground began to thrash and vomit and die.

Hours later, the first thing he realized was how strong he was.

This realization came to him after the man whose blood he had drank bent over him and Jim--he can more accurately be called that now, though it is not yet his name--seized the arm and wrenched it straight off. He had time to scream, just enough, before Jim grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into a wall, over and over, until there was nothing left to break against the rock and he was left clutching a pulpy mess of crushed bone and blood and brain held together by a few strands of hair.

And it had been _easy_.

Jim laughed, delighted, and then tipped his head back and breathed in the air.

Something smelled _delicious_.

The years that followed were the hardest. In those days, the only place a man could live in the style Jim liked was Rome, and Rome believed him dead. So he ran, city to city, Alexandria, Carthage, Athens, Judea, Byzantium, Syria Palaestina and as far west as Babylon. For years he darted across the Mediterranean until a century had passed and everyone who had seen his face was dead. Of course, by then, Rome had fallen.

He took himself to Asia, where they still knew how to do things like _read_ and _write_ and _behave_. God, but the West had gotten stupid. It was in China that he stepped out of the shadows. He started building connections, networking with others of his kind, forming alliances.

Why shouldn’t they, after all? Why live in the darkness, running and hiding from humans? We are _stronger_. We are them improved. _They_ should run from _us_.

He acquired a reputation as a man who could get you what you wanted. He’d bring you the meat and take out the trash, for a price, and could find you whatever you asked for, no matter how specific. There were rumors he’d brought a man a princess, let him bleed her almost dry and had her in her bed dead of apparent fever by morning.

At first he worked on more of an individual commission basis. But over time, he noticed the same few requests, over and over, and sensed a business opportunity.

By the late nineteenth century, Jim had 335 locations on five continents, every one a vampire diner disguised as a brothel disguised as an inn or a theater or a bar. He had houses all over the world, a full staff to handle what he didn’t want to, and anything he wanted with a snap of his fingers. He’d written papers on his experiments with breeding programs, diets, feeding patterns, vampire anatomy and history...

And he was _bored_. After a thousand years, there wasn’t much new under the sun, and Jim Moriarty had never been an easy man to amuse.

Then he started losing livestock.

One planned for a certain amount of product loss: accidents with customers, disease and the like. There had been runaway attempts. But this was a step beyond that. Soon he was losing three or four a week, just vanishing under the proprietors’ noses. Some vampire was stealing his stock.

It was _lovely_.

He ordered better customer records. It brought him a few leads, but ultimately nothing. The humans wouldn’t talk, though they obviously knew _something,_ which meant-- _no_.

Not a vampire, after all.

That thought was what led him to an alley behind a cheap theater in Shoreditch, where he found a tall man with dark, curly hair bleeding from the wrist and reeking of cocaine.

He gestured to his man, who hauled the human to his feet. His head lolled and he blinked hard, trying to rouse himself.

“His name’s Sherlock Holmes,” Moran said.

Jim tilted his head and frowned. “This is him? Really? _This_ is who’s been making off with my goods?”

“One hundred and seven,” the man spat.

Jim grimaced and shook his head. “How very disappointing.”

He took a step forward, moving for the throat.

“Sir.”

He stopped with a snarl. _“What?”_

“His name’s _Holmes,_ sir. Mycroft’s got him marked. One of Anthea’s.”

Jim scowled. “He’ll be dead in a month anyways.”

They left him there, barely moving, for another vampire to consume.

Jim was half right.

On a spring evening two years later, Jim was woken by a banging on his door.

“Sir! Sir, we’ve been raided!”

He had Moran pinned to the wall in seconds. “SAY THAT AGAIN!” he shouted.

“Raided,” he choked out. “All across Europe, they--everything’s shut down--”

Jim growled and tore out his throat. It’d heal, but in the meantime he’d have some silence.

“Oh, this is good,” he said, clapping his hands together. “This is simply _fantastic_. Get out, Moran; you’re bleeding all over the Sumakh.”

Jim grinned at his reflection as he washed the blood off his hands in the sink. _If the European operations are totally obliterated, the network will have scattered, the livestock freed. We’ll be starting from scratch._

“Just marvelous.” He giggled.

“You might take care with your staff in future,” said a voice behind him, “particularly on nights such as this.”

_Oh, I could just_ die _._

“Evidently you don’t know me,” Jim said, turning round.

He was perhaps thirteen-per-cent surprised to recognize the tall man who’d made off with over a hundred of his cattle, gone paler and colder and strong. He was much more surprised to have not heard of a new London vampire, and one of Mycroft’s.

“On the contrary,” Sherlock Holmes said, “I think it is evident that I do. Take a seat. I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say.”

Jim hopped up onto the edge of the sink. “How precious, Sherlock. We both know very well anything I have to say has already crossed your mind.”

He inclined his head. “Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.”

Jim sighed. “You were a distraction, pet, but I’ve bigger and better matters. _Don’t_ get in my way.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Oh, my apologies, was that supposed to _frighten_ me?”

“It should.”

“Danger is familiar in my trade.”

“This isn’t danger,” said Jim, “this is inevitable destruction. This is the oncoming storm, the Great Flood, the meteor that wiped the dinosaurs from the Earth. You’re standing in front of more than me.” He spread his arms. “You’re in the way of a machine, and if you don’t move...” He let his arms fall with a sad little shake of his head and a pout. “We _will_ crush you.”

The last line was casual: a fact, not a threat.

“You’ll never beat me, Sherlock Holmes. You’ve got to know, if you’re clever enough--if you’re _good_ enough to destroy me, I’ll do the same to you.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “As you should know that if I were assured of the former, I would _gladly_ suffer the latter.”

Jim slid down off the sink and stepped close to Sherlock. _“No,”_ he said. “This isn’t you. You’re no altruist, Sherlock Holmes.”

“No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”

_Fast, for a newborn._

Jim was surprised to find he stayed conscious even after his skull had been thoroughly bashed in. He wondered if it had been that way for his maker, the one he left in a cave in Scotland 1500 years ago.

It was the fire that got him in the end.

\---

The next time he woke, Moran was there again.

“Read one of those damn papers of yours,” he said. “Fuck, those are long. Anyways. It said bury you. So I did.”

“Well done you,” Jim said, spitting out a mouthful of dirt. “Go get me some bloody clothes.”

Adjusting was difficult. He’d slept a long time. They were truly living openly now, but _tamed_. Repulsive.

And Sherlock Holmes was still alive.


End file.
